درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

Due to the significance of teachers’ beliefs and individual variables, a bulk of studies has focused on teacher characteristics over the past two decades. As an attempt to further clarify the interplay between teacher-related constructs in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context, the present study set out to explore the structural model hypothesizing the predictive role of teachers’ self-efficacy and collective teacher efficacy in affecting the psychological well-being of teachers in Iranian EFL context. In so doing, a sample of 179 English teachers was given the three self-report scales measuring the variables under investigation. As for the statistical analysis, Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was employed to test the fit of the hypothesized model. The results indicated that teacher self-efficacy accounted for 19.8% of the variance while collective teacher efficacy amounted to 11.3% of the variance in psychological well-being. In addition, it was revealed that although both predictors had a unique effect on psychological well-being, teacher self-efficacy was a stronger predictor of psychological well-being than collective teacher efficacy. The results and implications are finally elaborated.

Working memory is believed to interact with a second language (L2) learning at the cognitive level. The present study sought to explore the impact of L2 readers’ prior knowledge on the contribution of working memory to reading comprehension. Eighty Iranian English learners were divided into two groups of high and low by their scores on L2 knowledge and the topic knowledge tests. Their working memory spans, and reading comprehension abilities were measured via a working memory test and a reading comprehension test respectively. The results indicated that working memory significantly predicted L2 reading comprehension only when the readers had sufficient topic knowledge. The results also show that the learners’ comprehension was mostly determined by their L2 linguistic knowledge, even when they had considerable working memory capacity. The findings imply that readers’ prior knowledge could moderate the contribution of working memory in L2 reading comprehension. A certain level of knowledge in the target language and on the topic is required for L2 readers to help working memory work more efficiently.

Styles and strategies are among the fundamental issues to be investigated in the language classroom in order to monitor learning process of language learners and to increase their awareness levels. Research on learner style and strategies suggests that a certain degree of awareness on these issues helps both learners and teachers distinguish between the weak and strong aspects of the learning process and take action reasonably. In this sense, in the present study, it was aimed to investigate the learning styles of the student teachers attending Turkish universities and their awareness about indirect strategy use. In the study, survey method was used. To identify style awareness and strategy use of the student teachers, three questionnaires -The Learning Style Checklist, Indirect Strategy Use Questionnaire, and Strategy Instruction Awareness- were administered to the student teachers. Quantitative analyses were used to evaluate the collected data. Undergraduate student teachers –total 226 second year student teachers- participated in the survey. The results indicated that the student teachers used indirect strategies efficiently as consistent with their learning styles. They used metacognitive, affective, and social strategies to defeat the possible problems they faced during language learning process. It was also reported that they felt themselves capable of planning and evaluating their learning process, lowering their anxiety level, taking emotional temperature by encouraging themselves, and cooperating with others.

Along with growing technology, the flipped learning model has emerged as an alternative to conventional teaching methods. The present study attempted to investigate the students' perceptions of a flipped learning classroom experience contrasted with those of a non-flipped or conventional classroom. To this end, 23 Iranian EFL learners were assigned to two groups. During the first ten weeks, non-flipped teaching was applied to class A and flipped learning to class B. After the midterm, during the next ten weeks, the teaching methods were reversed. The students were interviewed in-depth about their impressions of the learning experience. Also, a questionnaire and students' portfolios were used to draw comprehensive conclusions. The qualitative analysis of data revealed four themes: flipped or non-flipped, working with technology, group commitment, and student-teacher relationship. Overall, learners had contrasting views about learning in the flipped classroom. In general, they preferred non-flipped classroom.

Flipped learning is an instructional approach that underlines the efficient use of classroom time by shifting the conventional activities of learners and educators in and out of the class. In flipped learning, students' roles as passive listeners change to active participants in classroom activities. The present study was designed to build a model of flipped classroom instruction (FCI) for the general IELTS writing. Additionally, this research intended to examine if there is a meaningful difference between the students’ general IELTS writing scores in the flipped class and those in the conventional class. An FCI model was carefully developed based on the thematic analysis of the previous flipped classroom studies about writing. Then it was operationally explained for a general IELTS writing class. The participants of the study consisted of 100 male and female Iranian EFL learners. Fifty learners were randomly selected to experience FCI and the other fifty learners received conventional classroom instruction. The findings revealed that the learners in the flipped classes, on average, acquired higher scores than the learners in conventional classes.   

This research aims to investigate the contributions of KARDS (knowing, analyzing, recognizing, doing, and seeing) to Iranian English as a foreign language (EFL) institute teachers’ professional identity reconstruction. The researchers employed purposive sampling to choose twenty teachers. A KARDS questionnaire (Hassani, Khatib, & Yazdani Moghaddam, 2019a, 2019b) was used to classify the teachers into a more KARDS-oriented group (n=10) and a less-KARDS oriented group (N=10) on the basis of their scores on the questionnaire through quartile-based visual binning technique. Pre-course interview, post-course interview, teacher educator and teachers’ reflective journals, and class discussions were employed to gather data. After the pre-course interview, there was an implementation phase during which all twenty teachers became familiar with KARDS. Then, Grounded Theory was applied to analyze the data. Findings showed that there were four big shifts from “uncertainty of practice to certainty of practice”, “the use of fewer macro-strategies to the use of more macro-strategies”, “linguistic and technical view of language teaching to critical, educational, and transformative view of language teaching”, and “conformity to nonconformity to dominant ideologies” in teachers’ professional identities in both groups. The changes were analogous and/or identical in nature but not in quantity, and they should be underscored and incorporated in teacher education programs.

The current study aimed to investigate the relationship among English for academic purposes instructors’ interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligence types, language teaching anxiety, and classroom management beliefs taking a correlational research design. To this end, a convenient sample of 98 EAP instructors were asked to complete the excerpted sections of McKenzie’s Multiple Intelligences Questionnaire, Teacher Anxiety Scale, and Behavior and Instructional Management Scale. The results of Pearson product-moment tests revealed a significant negative relationship between interpersonal intelligence and classroom management beliefs while no significant link was observed between intrapersonal intelligence and classroom management beliefs. The same results were obtained for the possible relationship between these two intelligence types and language teaching anxiety. Furthermore, a significant negative relationship was found between EAP instructors’ language teaching anxiety and classroom management beliefs. The multiple regression analysis also showed that interpersonal intelligence could strongly predict EAP instructors’ classroom management beliefs. Furthermore, the two independent samples t-tests demonstrated that language and content instructors differed with regard to their language teaching anxiety and classroom management beliefs in EAP classes. The results were discussed in light of previously existing literature and some pedagogical implications were presented for EAP teacher training courses.

Consecutive interpreting (CI) requires a lot of parallel cognitive and affective processes, which are challenging for the interpreter who has to deal with them concurrently . This study focuses on the problems trainee interpreters encountered intheir CI sessions. An analysis of the strategies they used to weigh whether they have been successful in completing their task is also given. The sample of the study consists of 50 senior students of Translation enrolled in CI course (English-Arabic) in the Fall Semester 2018/2019 at the Translation Department at Yarmouk University, Jordan. The Source Text (ST), which was divided into one-minute period for each time, was given to students for interpretation and then the Target Text (TT) was recorded. Most of the challenges encountered by trainee-interpreters were linguistic problems, memory problems, note-taking and reproducing the ST into the TL. It is imperative therefore that interpreter training should be as effective as possible and interpreters shoulddevelop a series of skills and strategies such as chunking and joining, shadowing, anticipating, listening and recalling and paraphrasing that can be used to solve the problems encountered.

Miscommunication has been reported as a major contributing factor to aviation mishaps. About 70% of the first 28000 reports to NASA Aviation Safety Reporting System were related to communication problems (Sexton, 1999). According to Chaparro and Groff (2002), the most frequent human errors in aircraft maintenance, is supposed to be information misinterpretation. The movement area of an airport is typically the place where a single misunderstanding may have serious and adverse effect on flight safety. Furthermore, Eadie (2000) puts emphasis on conducting research on applied communication related to real phenomena in the real world. Therefore, the current study aims to investigate miscommunication among aviation personnel. To this end, first, a corpus of 31 authentic audio records and reports of aviation mishaps was analyzed based on Grice’s maxims. Consequently, the findings of the study revealed that teaching Grice’s (1975) Maxims needs to be taken into account in verbal communication. The findings of the research have implications for curriculum designers, pilots, and air traffic controllers.

This study examined the role of the native language (L1) transfer in a non-native language (L2) acquisition of the there-insertion construction at the syntax-semantics interface. Specifically, the study investigated if Mandarin EFL learners would make overgeneralization errors in the situation where an L1 argument structure constitutes a superset of its L2 counterpart. Verbs of existence and appearance (EAA) such as exist, appear are possible with the there-insertion construction in which the single argument remains in the underlying direct object position. In Mandarin, some verb classes also allow their single arguments to appear in the verb-subject (VS) order. For example, VEA and verbs of monadic change of state (COS) (die, escape) are compatible with the VS order. Some verbs of manner of motion (MOM) (run, swim) are also permissible with the construction. Seventy upper-intermediate and advanced L1 Mandarin EFL learners and 30 native English speakers participated in an acceptability judgement test, the results of which show that L1 Mandarin EFL learners acquired native-like knowledge of the there-insertion construction with verbs of EAA, but they have difficulties recognizing the unacceptability of the there-insertion sentences with verbs of COS and MOM. Individual results by subjects show that it is possible to recover from L1 transfer. Mandarin EFL learners start to unlearn the overgeneralization errors with MOM verbs by drawing on the semantic properties. The experimental results provide further evidence for the previous findings suggesting that the L2 argument structure acquisition is constrained by L1, and the recovery from L1 transfer is also possible.